I started sewing in lockdown, like a lot of people did. I already loved thrifting, and I knew a bit about textile waste and fast fashion, but it wasn’t until I started making my own clothes that I really understood what goes into a garment.

The time, the skill, the cost of doing it properly. You can read all the statistics in the world, but it feels completely different once you’ve cut your own fabric and sewn your own seams.

Once you understand the real cost of making clothes, it is hard to unsee it. Somewhere along the supply chain, someone has paid the price that you didn’t.

But sewing is also just really joyful. I don’t think people fully understand that until they try it. It completely changes the way you think about your body and clothes.

Ready-to-wear clothing is designed to fit as many people as possible, which often means it doesn’t fit anyone perfectly. You might find something that fits your shoulders but gapes at the waist, or fits everywhere except for one seam that never sits quite right.

Sewing flips that around. You get to make the clothes fit you, instead of trying to make yourself fit the clothes. You choose the sleeve length, the rise, the neckline, and where you want the waistband to sit.

Then there is the moment someone compliments what you are wearing and you get to say, “Thanks, I made it.”

I keep coming back to the idea of sewing as a quiet revolution, because that is genuinely how it feels to me.

There is so much happening in the world that can feel completely outside our control, environmentally, economically and politically. Sewing doesn’t fix all of that, but it can give you a small bit of agency.

You choose the fabric. You choose the fit. You choose to move away, even slightly, from a system that is designed to keep us buying and discarding clothes without ever feeling satisfied with what we already own.

But really, it is also much simpler than that. I just love sewing.

I love the process, the problem-solving and the slow satisfaction of watching something come together in front of you. I also love the community around sewing just as much as the craft itself.

That is a huge part of why I host Auckland Frocktails, a social event where makers can get together, meet each other, swap stories and celebrate the things they have made. The sewing community is one of my favourite things I have ever been part of, and I want to help it grow.

I want more people to fall in love with sewing the way I have.

That is why I started Gather.

Love,

Kate x